


The Bubble

by BrooklynWrites



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 05:59:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18404546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynWrites/pseuds/BrooklynWrites
Summary: They sign new leases in the damp cool of late spring and swap spare keys immediately.And so goes their first year in Montreal.





	The Bubble

They sign new leases in the damp cool of late spring and swap spare keys immediately, notching them next to their own sets far more casually than the ‘for emergencies’ instructions the real estate agent suggests. They pace out the bright, empty rooms of their new apartments and talk about what will fit and what will have to be left behind in Ontario. He teases her about how many books she can bring, how many shoes. She asks him whether he plans to deck his place out as a shrine to the Leafs or if his tastes have finally aged beyond middle school. He laughs, concedes the old blue and white bedspread will stay in Ilderton.

Tessa can hardly believe any of it is real. That her name is here on a mailbox and she has a kitchen that will need a little dusting. That there’s a whole new city outside her window, full of new places to explore, new little habits and routines to develop. Maybe most of all that here’s Scott, at her side when she wasn’t sure if that would ever happen again, and he’s following her from room to room patiently as she muses out loud about decorating. And it all feels so real of a sudden, this whole wild dream of the comeback, she thinks she might burst from the wonder of it. It makes her impatient; she wants to find her skates, drag him to the rink right now, to start right now, to immerse herself in the sweat and struggle of what’s to come. It must read on her face, because the next thing Scott says is, ‘We’re really doing this, aren’t we?’ 

‘We are.’ Their grins match. 

\--

 

She crashes back to earth a bit a few weeks later. The movers had arrived early and then left the two of them to their own devices and the daunting task of turning empty spaces into homes. Emptying boxes, sorting belongings. It’s been hours, and yet very little about their new situation actually looks or feels livable yet. She’d tried to store things away but soon ran out of room. Scott has taken mostly to making piles. There’s a lump of running shoes in one corner, stacks of sweaters in another. She’s just torn open a box to find a toaster nestled in all his bath towels, and the part of her that craves order finally snaps. 

‘Were you high while you were packing?’ She gestures to the box in front of her and then to the room at large. Scott snorts and looks up from the floor where he’s sitting with a box he’s found is full of silverware packed alongside his desk lamp and a handful of old Skate Canada medals. 

‘In fairness, a lot of this has been in storage since we left Canton.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘So, uh, probably yes.’ He grins at her, but she just lets out a tired, frustrated huff and kicks at the pile of empty boxes that’s begun to accumulate in the middle of his living room.

‘I can’t believe you own so much stuff,’ she says. 

‘Me?’ he says, amusement written all over his face, ‘We gave up on your place this morning because you said you didn’t want to look at your stuff ever again. You yelled at the movers because they kept bringing more in.’ This was true. The movers had laughed and told her not to pack an entire library next time. She huffs. 

‘Well, if we don’t make it to Pyeongchang, it’ll probably be because we’re still buried under everything we own. Still paralyzed by indecision over where my couch should go. Can’t skate if we can’t find our skates!’ She aims another kick at the teetering mountain of cardboard. ‘Moving sucks.’ 

‘Sure, but how else would I have found these again?’ He holds up an old medal for a second, an obvious attempt at distraction. She continues to glower at him, doesn’t take the bait. He tries another tactic, sighing theatrically. ‘Nah, you’re right, definitely should have stayed home. Just trained at the rink, get Patch and Marie on Facetime, yeah? Would’ve been fine. And I heard, it’s a new thing, the ISU gives bonus points now for dodging Aunt Carol’s synchro team.’ 

That gets a smile started. ‘For sure.’ 

‘And no trouble for me to get back in shape with Ma cooking dinner every night.’ He raises an eyebrow at her and touches a hand to his stomach, which, yeah, she’d noticed, had never lost nearly as much of its tone as he liked to claim. 

‘I hear Alma’s mac and cheese is just what B2ten ordered.’ He laughs, and she feels some of the tension go out of her own shoulders at the sound of it. 

‘It’s gonna be fine, Tess, it’s just some boxes.’ He drops the old medal, lets it clink against all the rest of them. ‘Maybe we should take a break though, get something to eat?’ She looks around one more time at the mess of his apartment, then nods, once, in acquiescence. 

‘Yeah, okay.’ He stands, brushes dusty hands against his jeans. Meets her in the middle of the living room, wraps his arms around her shoulders and holds her against him. 

‘Gotta remember to keep you fed or Marie really will be digging at least one of us out of the wreckage, eh?’ She elbows him in the side. 

\--

One morning she times it - it takes her exactly two minutes and thirty-seven seconds to get from her door to his, if she walks at a reasonable pace. Add thirty seconds if the neighbor with the sweet little dog happens to be outside. Add five minutes if Scott texts to ask her to pick up something from the deli on the corner before she gets there. As much time as they’ve spent together, him living so close is still a novelty. She’d half-worried she’d suffocate under it, but it’s more like how she imagines summer camp must be, or life in a college dorm. A cozy security in being able to reach your favorite person in your slippers. 

\--

They unpack everything, eventually. Stock their kitchens, organize their closets. And when summer comes to Montreal in earnest it’s just as they’re ready to jump fully back into life in chilly ice rinks. The contrast of it hits her harder than she’d thought it would. She’s thrilled, elated even, to be plotting and practicing at Gadbois, for once relishing in the sore muscles and fresh bruises of a hard day’s work. But there’s a whole sun-warmed city beyond the boards that calls to her too. 

So, they try to wring out every bit of it they can with the time they have. They swap the studio for the parking lot when it comes to dance rehearsal, sneak outside to eat in the grass on their lunch breaks. They climb Mont-Royal at sunset, pushing tired legs up the stairs, and watch the lights come on over the city like magic in the humid darkness, both too spent to talk but not needing to either. He slings an arm around her shoulders, drops a kiss to her temple.

‘You’re sweaty,’ she says.

‘So are you.’ Neither of them moves. 

One evening they wander along the river, dodging tourists, and she goads him into taking her on the ferris wheel at the old port. 

‘Please? We have to do it, or soon we’ll just be grizzled city dwellers too cool for all the guidebook things.’ 

‘Speak for yourself, I’ve always been too cool.’ She resorts to batting her eyelashes and he grumbles but gives in. And then, a few minutes later, at the top of the ride, when she leans just slightly out of her seat to point out something below them, he goes a little wide eyed, gets a firm hold on her elbow, and the real reason for his resistance clicks. Scott Moir, afraid of heights. Who knew? She wrinkles her nose at him in a mix of amusement and sympathy but reaches for his hand and laces their fingers together. Holds it until they’re safely back on the ground. Buys him a ridiculous pair of glow in the dark flashing glasses from a street vendor to make it up to him. Wearing them, he looks like something out of a bad music video and she cackles. 

‘Yeah, you’re definitely too cool.’ He keeps them on for the rest of the night.

\--

It’s summer and theirs is a city full of food, and while they both have diets to follow she also refuses to limit herself entirely, refuses to let her life be consumed by calorie counting and the stress of constant Canton-style weigh-ins. So they go out for lazy brunches on their days off, and she wears filmy sundresses and her hair down around her bare shoulders and they have the same argument every time over whether sweet or savory breakfast foods are the best. She actually makes a spreadsheet to track their rankings of all the best bagel places. And on more than one occasion they manage to eat entire meals of only free samples at the markets, fruit juice running down their wrists and the air heavy with the smell of fresh fish and cheese and bread.

One random Tuesday in July they split an order of poutine then collapse in a grassy corner of the park to digest all the cheese and gravy for the rest of the afternoon, arms and shoulders and knees brushing every time they laugh. There’s news about their families at home and gossip about their training mates. 

‘Can you imagine the things we’d know if we actually understood French?’

‘We’d be too powerful, it’s for the best.’

There’s somehow an entire plot outline for a musical theater show they string together based on the imagined backstories of other people in the park around them, plus one especially charismatic pigeon.

‘Look at him with that purple feather! And that strut! He’s obviously auditioning for the part, Tess.’ She giggles until her abs hurt. (and if their coaches give them strange looks weeks later for belting out a chorus of ‘There’s No Pigeon Like Show Pigeon’ during warmups, complete with jazz hands, they won’t even notice.)

He buys her a bundle of golden sunflowers from a street stand on the walk home, and she doesn’t know whether the heat in her cheeks is leftover from a day in the sun or from the way he looks at her when he hands them over with a wink, ignores the way her stomach flutters slightly. She puts them in a little vase in her kitchen, then, feeling silly even while she does it, she slips one of the stems into her skating bag, props it in her locker at the rink the next day. A little piece of summer to tide her over while she’s on the ice. She can’t seem to stop smiling. 

\--

She comes home from pilates late one afternoon in August to find him asleep on her couch. The tv is turned to a baseball game, but the volume’s down so low she doubts he was ever really watching it. She drops her bag on the floor and studies him for a minute. She knows he’s been tired lately, knows it down to her bones because she’s feeling it too. The reality of actually competing again is starting to catch up to them both the longer summer drags on, the more they dig into the meat of their new programs. It’s exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure. But he looks so content at the moment, stretched out on his side with his hair sticking up a little. She finds herself yawning just looking at him. She’d planned to shower, do laundry, start dinner, answer a phone call from her sister she’d missed almost a week ago. But suddenly there’s nothing more she wants to do than lie down and nap. With him. So she toes off her shoes and, carefully, hoping not to wake him, tucks herself against his chest. There’s not much room though, and when she loses her balance and starts to roll backwards off the couch she squeaks and reaches on instinct for his side to catch herself, a move that startles him awake. He blinks at her for a second. 

‘Hi,’ she says, half whispering. 

‘Hi.’ His face is close, eyes sleepy and soft. He smells like the peppermint gum he’s always chewing, like soap and warm skin. ‘What’re you doing here?’

‘You’re on my couch.’ She gets a noncommittal hum in response. ‘Why are you on my couch?’ It’s not accusatory, she’s curious. The corner of his mouth turns up. 

‘Wanted a nap.’

‘You have your own couch, I happen to know. I’ve seen it. I’ve even sat on it.’ His smile widens and he shakes his head and shrugs with his whole body, hooks an arm around her back to keep from sending her off the edge again, then tugs her flush to him. 

‘Maybe I just missed you,’ he says against her neck, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. She laughs.

‘You saw me this morning, at the rink. It’s been four hours.’ She feels his own laugh as much as she hears it. 

‘So? I missed you.’ She lets out a breath of faux-frustration and he runs his hand slowly up and down the curve of her back for a while, until he goes still and she thinks he must have fallen back asleep. 

‘I missed you too, you big weirdo,’ she says to his chest, and again she feels his laugh as much as she hears it.

When they wake it’s late, the last light of the day throwing deep shadows across the room. She has the creases of his tshirt imprinted on the side of her face. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, flips channels and settles on old _Friends_ reruns. They eat cold leftovers for dinner side by side in the dim glow of the tv. She texts her sister before she goes to bed _Sorry, was going to call earlier but we fell asleep. Scott says hi. Talk soon._ In the morning the response is just a string of question marks.

\--

Fall arrives. They still go to brunch, her sundresses now more sweaters and scarves, but it’s harder to find time because suddenly they’re back into the full swing of a season. And they’re winning. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to make a dream come true. 

Late one night after a first place finish she’s sprawled in her hotel bed with a novel and the M&Ms she snagged from the vending machine down by the ice maker when she hears voices in the hallway. Male voices, the loudest of them distinctly her partner’s, whose room happens to be directly beside hers. She listens to the lot of them stumble inside, and if she hadn’t already known they’d had plans to hit the bars their current general volume and level of coordination would’ve given them away. Someone lets the door slam shut and there’s a series of clunks that sound like furniture being rearranged. There’s laughter, some yelling. She’s pretty sure it’s Scott she can hear singing something. She rolls her eyes, attempts to go back to her book. Burrows deeper into the blankets. But she can’t concentrate. She fishes her phone out from the sheets beside her. 

_‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself a party,’_ she texts. 

_‘You’re awake!’_ is his answer, almost immediately. Then, _‘come over!’_ She smiles. Two decades and he’s never stopped trying to get her introvert-self to socialize. 

_‘It’s okay, I’m reading. You’re loud.’_

_‘Too loud?’_

_‘You’re celebrating.’_

_‘Rather celebrate with you.’_ He gets sappy when he drinks; it’s as endearing as it can be annoying. 

_‘Have fun and say hi to the guys for me.’_ She sets her phone back down and picks up her book, has to re-read the page for the third time to remember what was happening but then a few pages later she gets into it, the story finally starting to come together in a way that makes her understand all those positive Goodreads reviews. Which is maybe why she doesn’t notice that the hubbub next door has gone quiet until there’s a knock on her door. 

When she opens it, Scott swoops in immediately, sweeping her into a hug that lifts her off her feet, and she can’t help but giggle at his enthusiasm. He’s warm and not quite as drunk as she might have guessed. When he sets her down he holds up a bag of M&Ms identical to the one she’d bought two hours earlier. 

‘Figured party 2.0 needed chocolate.’ 

‘Great minds think alike,’ she says, and points to the opened bag still on top of the bed. He shrugs.

‘Well, now you have two.’ He tosses the second bag beside the first and heaves himself onto the bed on his belly. She reclaims her spot under the covers. ‘What’re you reading?’ he asks from somewhere beside her hip. She flips the book’s cover towards him and he picks his head up enough to squint at the title. ‘Any good?’

‘Just started getting really good, yeah.’ 

‘Read it to me?’ he asks, and the question pulls her back fifteen years at least, to another competition trip, one when she was jealous he’d managed to get the brand new Harry Potter before her, and they’d both agreed that if he read it first there was no hope he’d be able to keep from spoiling it for her. So they’d compromised - she could read it, but only if she read it out loud to him. It sneaks up on her sometimes, how much life they’ve really shared.

‘Sure,’ she says, and he rearranges himself, shifting so his head rests heavy in her lap. They finish the first bag of candy as she reads and open the second. She’d half expected him to interrupt her with questions, to crack jokes, to behave generally like the restless little boy he was the last time they did this, the one that so often still shines through. But the most attention-seeking thing he does is pick up her hand not currently holding the book and drag it to his head, like a puppy pawing at her to be petted. She swats at his shoulder gently but then obliges, sinking her fingers into his hair. His hum of appreciation makes his whole body vibrate, and he tilts his head to kiss her thigh through the blanket. 

Turns out she’s the one who starts getting a little silly, sleep-drunk and maybe slightly sugar-high and mostly just so, so happy. There’s different voices for different characters. Dramatic pauses while she chews a piece of candy or turns the page. The occasional sound effect. The murmur of traffic outside and all the while a steady background drumbeat of something that sounds a lot like ‘I wanted this more than the medals,’ though she’s too content to be paying attention.

\-- 

They fly home to London for Christmas on a flight that leaves at what Tessa would call a cruel and unusual hour if she had the mental capacity to string words together so long before the sun comes up. She’s tying her shoes when he appears quietly in her kitchen with coffee and croissants, travel-ready in jeans and an old U of M sweatshirt. He carries her overfull suitcase out to his car, both of them leaving crunchy footprints in the snow that dusted the sidewalks while they slept. 

He turns her seat warmer up and puts the radio on low as they wind through the brittle darkness of the city at that hour. And it’s just the news, the usual traffic report and weather delivered in soothing, early morning French; she doesn’t really notice right away how much of it she understands. Her grasp of the language is definitely stronger, but it’s not just that. It’s the names of the streets too, how she can picture the crowded intersections being listed off, the corner where someone skidded into a fire hydrant on black ice. She’s been to the grocery store advertising a sale on citrus and yogurt. More snow is on the way, will pile up on the sidewalks she walks every day. 

They are flying home, yes, but it’s the first time she’s really felt like they are leaving home as well. For one mad second she thinks she might burst into tears right there on the highway, though she’d never be able to explain why. 

She doesn’t speak until they’re almost at their gate, the sky just starting to lighten beyond the line of planes on the tarmac. 

‘Do you think your mom’s already made those cookies?’ He looks at her, his own carry-on slung over one shoulder and hers on the other, and if he thinks there’s anything at all strange about her first sentence of the day involving baked goods, he doesn’t show it, doesn’t even need to clarify exactly what cookies she means. 

‘Probably. Think she said something about having the kids over for gingerbread houses last weekend or something, she would have made them then.’ She frowns a little, and he goes on, ‘I’m sure she saved you some though.’ 

‘No, no, I just thought,’ she pauses as they find two seats at the gate and Scott dumps their bags to the floor at their feet. ‘I just thought maybe I could help this year. You know, learn how to make them?’ For some reason she’s blushing a little saying it out loud, and his face brightens - she’s sure he’s about to tease her for being a disaster when it comes to cooking - but instead he laughs. 

‘You didn’t have to wait for Mom, babe, we could’ve done it. _I_ could’ve shown you how to make them. Been doing it since I was yeah-high, basically.’ She’s met with a sudden mental image of a pre-teen Scott, flour dusted and desperately wishing to dart off to a hockey game but still carefully rolling out cookie dough with his mom in the name of Moir holiday tradition. She smiles. 

‘Next year, then, okay? I’ve mooched my favorite cookie off your family for far too long.’

‘Not nearly long enough,’ he says, gripping her knee. ‘But yeah, next year, we’ll make some. That’d be nice.’ He smiles at her and they’re quiet again after that, maybe just both sleepy still, or both lost in thought at the idea that ‘next year’ means the Olympics will be dangerously close, means their holidays will probably be sacrificed to the fickle gods of twizzles and step sequences and how many sequins is the right number of sequins. That ‘next year’ feels like a countdown to something other than just Korea. His hand stays on her knee until they board. 

Her mom is picking her up at the airport and his dad is getting him, and once they have their bags and everyone has hugged everyone else, she somehow finds herself on the verge of crying for the second time that morning, a lump in her throat at the idea of saying goodbye to him. Which is ridiculous, she knows. It’s three whole days, she’ll probably talk to him every day anyway, and she’s been desperately looking forward to the time with her family, and maybe she should have eaten more than half a croissant for breakfast, but whatever the reason, before she can think about it any more or stop herself, she’s up on her toes and kissing him. She’s taken them both by surprise so the angle’s a little off, and it’s quick, but not so quick she can’t help but notice his mouth is warm, that he tastes faintly like the coffee he’s been drinking all morning. 

‘Merry Christmas,’ she says, when she breaks away, and he’s looking at her with the strangest expression on his face. She wants to know what he’s thinking but he’s giving nothing away, and she’s usually so good at reading him the fact that she can’t right now makes her panic a bit. She steps back and mumbles something about seeing him for their return flight on the 27th then turns, reaches for her bag and her mother’s elbow, and walks towards to the door. Leaves him standing next to the baggage carousel, his dad pretending to be very interested in the row of taxi service advertisements pinned up beside the water fountain. An instrumental version of Jingle Bells playing through scratchy speakers. 

They don’t talk about it. She fidgets with her phone all afternoon, not sure if she’s hoping he’ll write or working up the courage to reach out herself. Eventually her mother gently takes her phone from her and replaces it with a glass of wine.

He texts her the next day as if everything was normal, sends a _Merry Christmas!_ and a slew of photos of his nieces and nephews ripping into their gifts, followed by one of him looking unreasonably pleased with himself while wearing every single ribbon and bow the kids had pulled from their presents and stuck onto him. Her stomach unknots. 

The holiday is a quieter affair at her house, but no less sweet, and she sends him pictures of her breakfast plate piled full of waffles, of her little niece in an elf hat, of an old photo her mother’d dug up of the two of them in costume for a holiday show at the Ilderton rink a lifetime ago, Tess in candy cane striped tights and both of them caught mid-laugh at something that must have just happened behind the camera. 

They check in on Boxing Day after he finishes his third round of Candy Land with the kids ( _of course I didn’t cheat, who do you think I am?!_ ) and before he puts on his hockey skates with his brothers. She reminds him he’s not allowed to break a leg, or break anything really, and he assures her he won’t. Later, when she’s in between _When Harry Met Sally_ and _White Christmas_ , she gets a string of thumbs up emojis and a selfie of all three Moir boys together, proof there was no lasting damage. If her mother and sister exchange glances at how much she smiles at her phone all day, she doesn’t notice. 

By the time they meet back at the airport it’s easy enough to pretend like she never kissed him at all, to file the moment away with all the other moments that make their relationship the unruly, undefinable thing that it is. At some point in the trip he digs out a tub of those cookies, tells her not to eat them all at once. She opens the lid to sneak one right then, but it’s not until she’s all the way back in her apartment and unpacking that she’ll notice there’s a recipe card tucked inside too, all the ingredients and instructions listed out in Alma’s careful handwriting and something else scrawled across the top in Scott’s slightly less careful script - ‘Your turn next year, Virtch! Promise!’ 

\--

It snows a lot in January. He gets her right in the left ear with a snowball in the parking lot as they’re leaving the rink one day. She catches him unsuspecting two weeks later with a whole armful of it right down the back of his jacket. 

\--

It takes three minutes and four seconds to get to his place when there’s snow on the sidewalks. An extra ten minutes if he asks her to pick something up from the deli across the street because now she stops to chat with the older Polish man who runs it. He gives her free slices of cheese and tells her about how his daughter is doing in medical school. She updates him on their season, has him exclaiming in Polish while watching competition video on his phone behind the counter.

\--

She’s never liked Valentine’s Day. Never liked the cheesiness, the weird forced romanticism. The social expectation that she should feel sorry for herself if she doesn’t have anyone to give her a silly stuffed animal or a dozen dramatic roses. And this year she’s extra cranky, her hip still sore from a rough fall yesterday, and tired- a neighbor’s car alarm had gone off twice the previous night. She just wants to get home and burrow into her bed with Netflix. 

It was her turn to drive though, so she can’t leave until Scott’s ready to go too, and when he finally comes out of the locker room she’s already bundled into her winter wear and scowling at the strings of paper hearts someone had hung across the lobby.

‘In a hurry to get out of here, kiddo?’ 

‘Kinda. Figured you’d be too,’ she says as they push open the door and brace themselves against the icy wind. He looks at her, confused. 

‘Why, do we have something to get to?’ 

‘No. Yeah. I mean, I’m just tired. And thought you had a date.’ They’re almost all the way to her car, but he stops short. 

‘What, why?’ She stops a few feet in front of him and turns to face him. 

‘It’s Valentine’s Day, Scott,’ she huffs. ‘When have you ever not had a date on Valentine’s Day?’ She honestly can’t think of one since he was probably fifteen, which for some reason only makes her crankier. 

‘Who exactly am I supposed to have a date with?’ She rolls her eyes.

‘I don’t know, literally anyone?’ He cocks his head, and she can’t believe he’s actually trying to play dumb with her. ‘The Starbucks girl! She flirts with you every time we go in there.’ She gestures towards the building they’ve just left. ‘Or, you know, you _have_ to know, that you could have asked any woman in that rink to dinner if you’d wanted to and she would have said yes, including some that are definitely too young for you and a few who, honestly, are probably too old.’ She meets his eyes then, and he’s squinting a little into the wind and the sun to look at her, but there’s something in his gaze or his posture that reminds her of that morning at the airport, the one they’ve still never mentioned. Her stomach rolls at the thought. She turns back towards her car, hits the button to unlock it with a beep. ‘Can we just go home please? It’s cold and I’m so tired.’ 

‘Yeak, okay,’ he says and catches up to her, slinging his skate bag into the back seat and slamming the door. ‘Just for the record though,’ he says as they put on their seatbelts, ‘there’s no one in there that I want to date.’ 

‘Fine, whatever.’ They drive the rest of the way home in silence. 

She’s fresh out of the shower and feeling mildly less irritable a while later when she picks up her phone to a new message. 

‘ _So I might have lied_ ,’ it says. She almost doesn’t want to answer him, doesn’t want to worsen whatever weird mood she’s in by picking fights with him. She towel dries her hair for a minute, considering, then gives in. She’ll always give in. 

‘ _I hope not to your mother, I know she hates that_.’ 

‘ _Haha, Virtch. And no, I meant to you._ ’ 

‘ _Is that so?_ ’

‘ _There might be somebody from the rink I’d want to have dinner with tonight._ ’ She almost lets the whole thing drop at that, because he’s either building towards a lame punchline or about to say something she’s not sure she wants to hear. And yet. 

‘ _Anyone I know?_ ’ She watches the three little grey dots appear. 

‘ _Pick you up in an hour?_ ’ Oh. _Oh._ She laughs out loud to her empty room and there goes that same telltale swoop in her stomach she can’t seem to rid herself of lately. Two more messages arrive in quick succession. ‘ _Only if you want though_ ’ followed by ‘ _I know you’re tired._ ’

‘ _Yes, please._ ’ 

He brings her tulips, not roses, and two bars of the fancy dark chocolate she’d been eyeing the last time they went shopping together. He offers her his arm on the walk out to his car, and she slips into step beside him. He’s in the middle of a story about something dumb Zach had said at the rink earlier when it suddenly occurs to her. 

‘Hey, are we going to even be able to get in for dinner somewhere without a reservation on Valentine’s Day?’ 

‘Yeah, don’t worry about it.’ 

‘I’m hungry though, I don’t want to wait, like, three hours somewhere. Maybe we could just order Chinese or something?’ 

‘It’s fine, I got it covered.’

‘Wait, what do you mean?’ She looks up at him, and he has the decency to look sheepish. ‘You made a reservation? When did you make a reservation?’ He shrugs, playing it off. 

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She raises an eyebrow at him. ‘Well excuse me for hoping I might be able to talk a pretty girl into a date.’ He winks at her and it’s enough to warm her despite the sharp chill in the air. 

‘Did Starbucks girl turn you down, is that what happened?’ She’s teasing, but even as she’s saying it she realizes it’s actually important to her to know that she wasn’t his second choice. He just laughs. 

‘My god woman, I don’t even know who this Starbucks girl is. Is it possible she’s actually flirting with you? Because I swear to you I can’t even picture her.’ She snorts, shakes her head. 

‘Well pay more attention, she’s cute. Maybe you wouldn’t be stuck with me tonight.’ He opens the passenger side door for her, but keeps a hold on her arm a moment longer. 

‘Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you sooner, but, I just…’ He looks down for a second, takes a breath, starts over, ‘just trust me, okay? There is no _stuck_ involved.’ His nose is red with the cold but his face is open and earnest; he looks like something that might break if she argues the point further. 

‘Okay,’ she says, voice and smile soft, then squeezes his hand and slides into the car. As they merge into traffic he goes back to his story about Zach. A thing happened at a birthday party? Or a bachelor party? Something to do with Madi or maybe Olivia? She’s only half listening. The rest of her is caught on the implication that he made the reservation for her, for them, the two of them together, for a holiday that’s decidedly on the far side of platonic. Then again, they’re friends. They have dinner together all the time, what difference is it really if they keep each other company on a night like tonight when neither of them have dates? 

He offers his arm again when they get to the restaurant, and she leans on him to pick her way in heels through the leftover snow that dots the sidewalks. The restaurant is crowded and warm, but in a way that feels more festive than claustrophobic, and it’s not one they’ve been to before. She has a brief image of him sitting up late scouring the internet for options. Or maybe he asked Patch for a recommendation, a thought that for some reason makes her think she won’t be able to look their coach in the eye at practice tomorrow. 

However he chose it, he chose well. The food is good, and she’s feeling daring enough to let herself savor a second glass of wine. As they’re sharing dessert- some rich, extra chocolatey thing they ordered to split but that they both knew she’d eat most of- a couple across the room gets engaged, and the whole restaurant applauds. 

‘That was sweet,’ she says when things quiet down, and she means it. 

‘Yeah, you’d hate it though,’ he says, then clarifies when she looks at him in surprise, ‘you would, an entire restaurant full of strangers witnessing that? I feel like rule number one of proposing to Tessa Virtue would be to never do it in public.’ She blushes. A lifetime and she’s not sure she’ll ever stop feeling exposed by how thoroughly he knows her, even in this. 

‘True,’ she says, and he smiles. ‘And rule number two would probably be don’t surprise me.’ She pauses, thinking. ‘Or honestly really don’t even propose at all. Like, let’s just talk about it, you know? Two equal adults making a decision.’ 

‘Noted.’ He pushes the rest of the dessert plate towards her and sets his fork down.

Mostly, it feels like any other night, until he’s walking her back to her door and she’s suddenly shy about asking him to come inside for a while. Usually, if they’re out in the evening, they’ll end the night on somebody’s couch with a few episodes of whatever’s on tv or whatever they’ve been binging or just sitting together to catch up on work emails. But for some reason the idea of doing that tonight feels like it would ruin something, break a spell, like that moment at the end of a theatre production when the house lights come up and everything on stage goes from magic to plywood and paint. 

She stalls while fishing for her keys, and when she turns back to him he must see something in her face because he immediately switches gears, doffing a pretend hat and offering an exaggerated, ‘Why thank you for a lovely evening, madame.’ She lets out a relieved giggle, does the best curtsey she can in heels on her icy front stairs. 

‘My pleasure, monsieur,’ she says, in her best French accent. They look at each other for a beat then, and his expression shifts just slightly. She thinks he might be asking for permission for something, and she thinks she’s giving it, but when he leans in a second later his kiss lands soft on her cheek, warm where her skin is cold. 

‘Prettiest girl in Montreal,’ he says as he pulls away, and she doesn’t see any sign in his face of the disappointment that’s lodged itself against her will in the space right beside her heart, making it hard to breathe. ‘See you tomorrow, T.’ 

‘Goodnight.’ 

She wants to cry. She wants to laugh. She wants to somehow tell her thirteen-year-old self that even this many years later Scott Moir will still be making her a little nuts on Valentine’s Day.

\--

The next time they’re at Starbucks the barista greets him by name with a wide smile, and Tessa hides her amused snort in his shoulder. ‘I really don’t think I’ve ever seen her before,’ he whispers into her hair. 

\--

They somehow finish all ten seasons of _Friends_.

‘‘Rachel getting off the plane is definitely much less romantic than I remembered. Who gives up Paris?’ she says, but when he looks at her they both have tears in their eyes. 

They flip channels for a while afterwards in search of something new to watch while they eat dinner. They settle on Jeopardy, and a week later she starts a scoresheet to keep track of how many points they each earn per episode. He does well on sports, science, obscure old pop culture. She gets literature, history, geography. Neither of them know a thing about art. She takes his phone when she catches him texting his sister-in-law for answers. She thinks they could do this forever. 

\--

They end the season as they started it, with a win, the last in a string of them to cap an undefeated run. It means they’ve got momentum heading into their Olympic year, and they’re grateful, and so tired they feel like they’ve been steamrolled. Beyond ready for a break before the tide pulls them back in, before the gears on the next stage of the comeback grind into motion. 

It’s late spring again, raining, their apartments so different from what they were a year ago that she has a hard time even imagining that two such lived-in spaces were ever empty shells full of empty boxes and poorly arranged furniture. At her place now there’s junk mail piled everywhere, four pairs of her shoes and two of his by the door. Drawings from her niece up on the refrigerator.

He’s making them lunch in her kitchen because neither of them were quite up for going out into the storm. She’s in sweatpants, hovering in the doorway just watching the way he moves through her space, cataloging the ways he’s changed since this time a year ago. His hair longer, his shoulders broader. The lines around his eyes a little deeper.

He asks her a question from where he stands at the stove and she doesn’t quite catch it over the music he’s playing and the sound of whatever is cooking, so she moves towards him. And then, because she just wants to, she moves even closer, wraps her arms completely around his waist and lays her head against his shoulder blade. 

‘What were you saying?’ she asks. He chuckles. 

‘I asked if you could grab me the vinegar.’ She goes to pull away, but he stops her, covers one of her hands at his front with his own. ‘But this is good too.’ They stand like that for a long moment. He stirs the vegetables cooking in front of him with his free hand, humming along with every few phrases of the song that’s playing. 

She snuggles closer, lets out a heavy sigh. She’s thinking that she’s hungry and that she’s pretty sure he borrowed her laundry detergent based on what his tshirt smells like. She’s thinking that she’s actually grateful that it’s raining because it’s an excuse to stay in and not put on real clothes all day. She’s thinking, but she’s not, not really, when suddenly she’s saying, ‘I feel like you should yell at me.’ He tenses in her arms. 

‘What?’

‘I feel like you should yell at me. Like we should have a fight or something.’ 

‘What are you talking about?’ She shrugs against his back. 

‘It’s been too easy.’ 

‘What has?’

‘This year.’ 

‘Tess,’ he turns off the stove and turns around, keeping both her hands in his. ‘We earned everything this year.’ He looks at her, and she knows it’s true, they worked so hard, harder and smarter than they ever have before, and they earned it. But for once that’s not really what she’s worried about. 

‘No, I know, skating was tough, but we did it. I guess I just meant everything else was too easy. This, us, whatever.’ She slips her hands from his and gestures at the space between them, the domestic scene of her kitchen.’ He’s eyeing her cautiously, like she’s a fragile wild thing that might take flight at any minute. 

‘It doesn’t have to be hard,’ he says quietly. 

‘No, but it is. With us, it is. Except now it’s not.’ She hadn’t realized that scared her until this moment. 

‘And that’s a bad thing?’ She laughs, but it’s a dry imitation of her usual laugh. 

‘Yes. Maybe. I don’t know? I just feel like maybe you need to yell or something, we can get it out of the way.’ 

‘Well, I hate to break it to you kiddo, but the plan was really to never yell at you again.’ 

‘Well, that’s just great.’ She scoffs a little, her hands falling to her thighs. 

‘You’re upset with me for not being upset with you?’

‘No, I just...’ she rubs at her eyes with the heels of her hands, not sure how they got into this conversation or what she’s even trying to say. ‘What was the plan then? What even was this year?’ She hopes he can read her well enough to finish the rest of the thought. _What if this was a fluke? What if we can’t keep it up until Korea?_ He looks at her for a long moment, the tension in his jaw and shoulders tight, and she can almost see the thoughts tumbling around in his head. It’s not enough to prepare her for what he says next. 

‘The plan,’ he lets out a breath, ‘was to woo you.’ She stumbles a half step backwards, her knees shaky all of a sudden.

‘Woo me?’ 

‘Yeah, woo you.’ He scratches at the back of his neck. ‘Apparently I’m not real great at it if this is surprising news to you.’ Her stomach flips in that way she’s become familiar with, and she stands, frozen, as a highlight reel of the last year whirs through her brain. It’s immediately, bracingly obvious.

‘No, I think I did notice,’ she says. ‘I just didn’t _really_ notice, or understand, or whatever, because you, I mean, we, we never did this,’ she gestures again to the space between the two of them, ‘this way before.’

‘I know, our thing was mostly fucking in rink closets and hotel rooms while my girlfriend was downstairs.’ He lets it hang there for a second, and it’s a testament to how much has changed that she thinks she wouldn’t even recognize those two people anymore. Then, ‘So yeah, the plan was to do things differently this time.’

‘To woo me?’ He nods, and he’s looking at her with so much nervous, hopeful affection she thinks the very edges of himself might start to blur, his whole being softening into something capable of melting away at her command. 

‘We sat on that couch,’ he points in the general direction of her living room, ‘the other day and picked a name for our future dog, T.’

‘If you don’t like Milo anymore, we can pick something -’ He cuts her off, smiling gently. 

‘Milo is perfect, but that’s it, isn’t it? Did you mean it? Because I’m in, completely. Dogs, or god help me, a cat, or whatever else comes our way. I want it with you.’ 

And just like that she’s crying, wiping streaks of saltwater from her cheeks with her sleeve. And just like that he’s pulling her into a hug. 

‘Happy tears or sad tears, T? You’ve gotta tell me.’

‘Happy. Really, really happy.’ He pulls her impossibly closer, presses his face into her neck. 

‘I’m in. We said we’d comeback for us, and I meant it, all of it,’ he says. She feels his own tears wet on her collarbone. They stay standing, wrapped around each other, until she thinks her own knees will hold her upright again. She sniffles, pulls away long enough to reach for the vinegar which she hands to him with a sheepish grin. He laughs, which sets her off too, the tears having hollowed them out, made them lighter, caught in a new, sweet and buoyant levity. He finishes making lunch, turns the music all the way up to sing along, pauses every so often to spin her around the kitchen as she giggles. 

Later, head against his chest on the couch, a late season hockey game on tv, lunch plates long empty and abandoned on the coffee table, he says something about the rain or the game, and she hums in response, thoughts elsewhere. 

‘Question,’ she says then, and sits up a little to look at him. ‘Christmas. At the airport. I kissed you.’ He raises an eyebrow.

‘I’m unsure which part is the question there, kiddo.’ She rolls her eyes. 

‘I kissed you! You were wooing me and didn’t bother to mention it then?’ He laughs. 

‘You didn’t see your face! You looked like you’d seen a ghost.’ He widens his eyes in imitation. ‘And then you basically ran away. Didn’t exactly strike a lot of confidence in a guy’s heart.’ 

‘Okay fine, I was a mess.’ He nods in lighthearted agreement and she shoves him lightly for it. ‘But what about Valentine’s Day?’

‘What about it?’

‘You didn’t kiss me then either.’ He shrugs, blushes maybe a little. ‘There was a moment,’ she wheedles.

‘I didn’t want to presume…’ She cackles.

‘So you chickened out?’

‘Oh yeah, totally and completely.’ He smiles at her, and it’s the same smile he’s always had for her but different somehow too, like when famous black and white photos from history get done up in full color and everything you thought you knew shifts a little.

‘What about now?’

‘What about it?’

‘Scott.’

‘Oh, you mean, I should-’ he doesn’t finish his sentence before his mouth is on hers, kissing her for all he’s worth. And it’s a familiar dance from there, their bodies attuned to even this, the choreography of his shirt joining her sweats on the floor, of all four socks strewn about the room. Of navigating the hallway between the couch and her bedroom blindly, limbs entwined. 

They’ve done this before, but not like this. Not with the domesticity of sheets that smell like her, the whole apartment cocooned in the bluster of the storm. The only possible distraction the unwashed lunch dishes still in the sink. They’ve done this before, and it was always good, couldn’t not be. 

But she doesn’t remember ever laughing so much, her blood fizzing with carbonated joy at each new warm expanse of skin she can reach. He teases her, a joy to equal hers evident in his eyes, in the way he takes her apart so thoroughly and enthusiastically. His hands and mouth somehow everywhere and exactly where she wants them all at once. Makes her sigh, makes her whine, makes her moan. Steals all the air from her lungs entirely. Reduces all the neurons in her brain to helplessness, every cell demanding only that he never, ever stop. 

When she climbs out of her post-coital haze she vaguely registers that he looks just as wrecked as she feels. On his back beside her, an arm slung over his still heaving chest. He turns his head to look at her and his eyes are dark, face flushed. 

‘Hey.’

‘Hi.’

They stay looking at each other, and it’s under the intensity of his gaze that she thinks to feel something like self-consciousness for the first time since he kissed her on the couch. He notices her squirm and grins, reaches an arm out to haul her against him. 

‘Had me worried there Virtch, thought I might have killed you,’ he says, and he sounds so proud of himself she wants to pinch him but can’t summon the muscle coordination to do so, settles for nipping at his collarbone. He breaths out a laugh.

He draws patterns against the bare skin of her back, and she should get up and do the dishes, make her grocery list for the week, turn off the tv. Should doublecheck that she got that interview rescheduled, go over travel logistics for all the tour dates and family trips coming up. 

All she does instead is rearrange them so she can pull the bed covers up and over them, until they’re wrapped tight in a bubble of blankets and each other. She kisses him in the half dark, sloppy and soft. Too blissed out to notice or care about anything but the reality of him in her bed, while somewhere the neighbor’s dog barks, and the hockey game on tv in the other room goes into overtime, and the rain keeps falling, drumming against the window with a question she doesn't want to hear - ‘bubbles always burst, don’t they?’


End file.
